Monday, February 28, 2011

Movies of 2010

10 Best Movies of 2010

10. The Crazies: This is the kind of movie that usually ends up on Worst Of lists - A remake of a little seen and long forgotten horror movie. But Olyphant man-crushes aside, it's a suprisingly good movie. A rare horror/thriller/slasher movie that has smart characters behaving intelligently. It deserved a much better box-office fate.

9. Waiting For Superman: This documentary about the unfortunate state of America's public school system is depressing, inspiring, frustrating and then depressing again.

8. The Town: That Ben Affleck is turning out to be a very good director. He's found where he belongs. BEHIND the camera. Behind it. All the way behind it.

7. Black Swan: Mind fuck. The hangnail scene and the nail cutting scene were more squirm inducing than anything else I saw this year (intentional division). Kudos to Natalie Portman for the best masturbation scene in a mainstream movie this year.

6. The Kids Are All Right: Annette Bening and Julianne Moore gave us what might be the most realistic on-screen marriage of the year. Come for married lesbians watching all male gay porn and stay for Bening screaming "I need your opinions like I need a dick in my ass!"

5. The King's Speech: Great movie, great performances. Beautifully shot. Geoffrey Rush is one of those actors who can take any part and make it memorable. Always a pleasure to watch, despite his somewhat grotesque appearance.

4. The Fighter: We've all seen the underdog/redemption sports movie. Many of them have even been about boxers. The Fighter still stands out because of its characters and the performances. I love Amy Adams character in this movie. She swears like a sailor and crawls around in lingerie. What more could anybody ask for? Christian Bale is amazing, especially the cake scene.

3. The Social Network: David Fincher is the best director working today. How many directors could take a script where all the characters do is sit at computers and talk to each other (all sounding the same) and make it visually interesting? Probably just one.

2. Inception: Movies that require the viewer to really pay attention shouldn't be so unusual. The zero gravity hotel fight was worth the ticket price alone. I have one question though - how old is Ellen Paige and why do I feel creepy whenever I look at her? Is she 13 or 30? I can't tell. She looks like I could easily fit her in a kitchen cupboard.

1. 127 Hours: Amazing movie. Amazing story. The only movie I saw last year that really moved me and made me want to stand up and cheer. My wife literally sobbed for ten minutes. Please put this movie on your Netflix queue. You'll be glad you did.



6 Worst

These are harder because I don't see every movie. And when something looks terrible, I usually don't go. It doesn't take a genius to know Sex and The City 2 was going to be a bad movie. I couldn't sit through the trailer. So a lot of movies that fill up most people's worst of list won't be on mine. Not that I'm a movie snob. As you'll read, I still see a lot of crap.

6. CopOut: You know what happens when a comedy isn't funny? You pay attention to the story. That's not a good thing when you're seeing a Kevin Smith movie.

5. Clash of the Titans: Money grubbing bad 3-D conversion aside, the movie just didn't really offer anything new. There wasn't much to it. Then it was over.

4. Dinner for Shmucks: Painfully unfunny. A classic example of a movie putting every funny line it has in the trailer (in this case, maybe 2 lines), leaving you nothing new to laugh at for what feels like 4 hours.

3. Legion: This movie is obviously really bad, and I blame myself for seeing it, but what makes it unbearably bad is that it takes itself so incredibly seriously. There are scenes in this movie that don't seem to fit anywhere. Actors clearly don't know what kind of movie they're in and old reliable Dennis Quaid doesn't seem to know what planet he's on. Just a terrible mish-mash of the worst parts from a dozen quasi-religious-sci-fi garbage movies before it.

2. Skyline: Skyline is terrible. I get that it had no budget, but that's no excuse for such awful dialogue. The opposite of The Crazies, almost every "character" in Skyline does several ridiculous, stupid, impossible things just to keep the "story" moving along. I'm being extremely generous when I use the words "character" and "story." If my choices were between watching this movie again or staring at the blue light and having my brain harvested by aliens, I'll take the light.

The Worst Movie of the Year is....

Alice in Wonderland: There was nothing engaging for me in this movie. Nothing. I didn't care about anything that was happening. I've never had my mind wander so much during a movie. There were a lot of bright colors and 3-D things moving around, but none of it added up to anything. ANYTHING. It was so uninteresting the main character didn't even change her face during the entire movie. The most cringe inducing scene of the year (unintentional division) was Johnny Depp's dancing at the end. Clearly, it was supposed to funny, but there wasn't a sound in my theater. Not a chuckle.

Random Awards and Thoughts

Best Use of 3-D: Piranha 3D - between the naked underwater swimming and the severed penis getting vomited up, this is the movie that most delivered what it promised.

Star Who Most Needs to Fire Her People: Jennifer Aniston - I don't get it. She's beautiful and funny, but she keeps signing up for absolute crap. First she gets stuck listening to Gerard Butler trying to talk in The Bounty Hunter and then makes an ill-advised sperm movie with Jason Bateman - maybe the only movie possible that could misuse both of those talented people. Then to kick start 2011 she jumps in bed with Adam Sandler? Somebody her a good part in a good movie. Please!

Best Use of Ass In a Trailer: Rachel McAdams in Morning Glory.

Funniest Sex Scene: MacGruber

Funniest Supporting Characters: Going The Distance - Charlie Kelly, Jason Sudekis, Christina Applegate and Jim Gaffigan all get big laughs in this R rated comedy that nobody saw for some reason.

Best Looking Sniper in a Train Station: The A-Team

Most Inappropriate Movie Title: Unstoppable

Least Realistic Scene of the Year: Jessica Biel and Jennifer Garner left alone to commiserate about how awful Valentine's Day is because nobody wants to be with them. This is flat out insulting. How is that supposed to make a ugly girl with a flat ass girl feel? If Jessica Biel and her perfect body can't find love, then everybody else is fucked.

Why Aren't These Two Bigger Stars?: Timothy Olyphant and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Most Distractingly Unrealistic Stunts: Salt. I don't understand why they had to put this crazy shit into what could have been a pretty decent movie. Angelina Jolie cannot leap onto the roof of a truck going 60 miles an hour. Can't happen. She also can't jump down an elevator shaft 2 floors at a time. And she certainly can't fly - yes, literally fly - out of a closet. She also needs to eat something.

Movie I Really Wanted to Like, But Just Couldn't: The Expendables. I'm sorry, but it's a bad movie. And it doesn't make sense. Why isn't Dolph Lundgren dead? Is that woman really supposed to be attracted to Stallone? And what the fuck is Mickey Rourke talking about?

Movie That Should Have Been Terrible, but was Actually much better than the Expendables:
Universal Soldier: Regeneration I know was technically a 2009 movie, but I only saw it last year. And it's pretty good. If you like action movies, it's worth checking out.

Trailer That Made Me Feel Bad For the Actor Until I Was Reminded That He Got Paid a Lot:
Gullivers Travels

Most Disturbing Scene of Characters Accepting Their Own Firey Death: Toy Story 3

Highest Grossing Movie I Didn't See: Twilight - Eclipse or whatever it's called. I just flat out don't get this series. At all. It looks like it's made and sold directly to unattractive, awkward teenage girls. I watched 15 minutes of the first movie and thought it was a comedy. I understand there are genres that are simply not for me and this clearly is one of them. So if it makes sad, homely adolescents happy to watch this stuff, they can have at it.

As for me, I'll be one theater down watching the latest Alien invasion/buddy cop/talking animal/lesbian/transformers/killer fish/Bruce Willis movie.

On to 2011 and it's 27 Sequels.

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